Seeing People Off
translated by Janet Livingstone
May 2017
142 pages, paperback
ISBN 978-1-937512-59-0
ISBN 978-1-937512-60-6 (ebook)
The novella Seeing People Off, published in 2008 by Koloman Kertész Bagala as Plán odprevádzania / Café Hyena, follows Elza and Ian, a young couple living in a huge apartment complex outside of Bratislava, where the walls play music and talk and time is immaterial. Drawing on memories, everyday interactions, observations of post-socialist realities, and Elza’s attraction to actor, Kalisto Tanzi, Seeing People Off is a kaleidoscopic, poetic, and deeply funny portrait of a relationship.
More About This Title in the Press
- “Absurdist Fiction from Slovakia: Jana Beňová on Post-Communist Life in Petržalka” by Tabatha Leggett on her blog, Bookmarked, March 2021
- “When Every Neighbor’s A Firecracker: Seeing People Off by Jana Beňová” by Paige Webb in the Kenyon Review Sept/Oct 2019, Volume XLI Number 5
- Review by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson in Slovak Novels in English, November 2018
- “Jana Beňová’s Seeing People Off” by Catherine Campbell in the Southern Humanities Review, February 2018
- “Book of the Month: Jana Beňová” by Ann Morgan on her blog, A Year of Reading the World, August 2017
- “Seeing People Off Is a Short, Strange Trip” by Michael Schaub on NPR, May 2017